They tried to make me go to rehab...

and I said "Fuck Yes!". But lets backtrack a minute.

I know conceptually that elephants are massive, but not Godzilla big. And I know Asian Elephants are slightly smaller than their African cousins we sometimes see at a distance in zoos. But driving up a hill in a full van, and suddenly realizing that there's a massive elephant a foot away from my face - an elephant that while perhaps not as long, is exceedingly taller, wider, and more massive than your van - really drives the point home.

Day 2 in Thailand was not much different than day 1. More explosions, even closer to my face. For Day 3, I wanted something different. Asian Elephants are a big tourist attraction here, but I know most elephant-related tourist traps are douchey at best and abusive at worst. Thankfully, Chiang Mai is not far from a world-renowned elephant rehab center.

There's an odd cultural difference in Thailand where perhaps animal welfare isn't so valued. One of the nosy women who run the hostel looked over my shoulder as I booked a visit to the sanctuary and laughed at me. She said I was 'naive and stupid to pay so much money [about $100] when you can't even ride an elephant!'

But see, this rehab center needs to be expensive, since its needs to care for more than 30 elephants in various states of need. The elephants there range in age from a few months in age to 90+ years. Some were rescued from the now-banned logging trade. Others were orphaned by elephant poaches. More than one elephant had mutilated feet from stepping on landmines at the Burmese border. More than one had broken backs from repeated forced matings with big aggressive males.

To be honest, I can't write much about the experience, as words won't do the justice pictures do. Imagine seeing a row of elephants lined up at the edge of a patio. Each one has a bucket of cucumbers and mangos and squashed squash and overripe bananas. Volunteers picked up a piece of fruit, one piece at a time, and held them out to the eager elephant. The creature stuck out its probing trunk - a truly bizarre snorkel close up - and wrapped the tip around their hand, forcefully yanking the fruit into their waiting mouth.

Now imagine having the elephants paraded into a river, where they're free to bath and squirt each other playfully. Now imagine two dozen people wading in after them with buckets, splashing the elephants and each other gleefully in one massive human-pachyderm waterfight. Afterward, both humans and elephants played in the dirt.

Imagine a baby elephant sticking its entire head into a bucket of water to take a drink. Imagine it then picking its head out of the water, looking at you quizzically, and spraying you in the face through its trunk. That happened to me too. An adolescent elephant then came up and 'kissed' me by sucking on my face with its trunk. It was moist and slightly sticky, and my face smelled nasty for an hour after.

When I wasn't playing with elephants, I was wasting time playing with the dozen or more stray dogs, snapping pictures of bizarre and beautiful orchids, and mock-flirting with our tour guide (and everyone else) - sorry, I'm still me.

Point is, in all the urban hustle and black powder, visitors to Thailand need to take a step back and understand the conservation issues at stake in their largely-imperiled environment. With attitudes like those of my hostel-keeper, soon the elephant shows where shackled and beaten individuals perform stupid tricks for handouts will be the only place to find elephants.

Oh, and a side note: Dear loud judgmental hostel-keeper, her bitchy mood-swinging fat daughter, her ADD-riddled son, and her drunk boorish husband, please change industries. Thank you.